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# Silver Bullet
Silver Bullet (SB) is a highly extensible, open source **personal knowledge playground**. At its core it’s a Markdown-based writing/note taking application that stores _pages_ (notes) as plain markdown files in a folder referred to as a _space_. Pages can be cross-linked using the `[[link to other page]]` syntax. This makes it a simple tool for [Personal Knowledge Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_management). However, once you leverage its various extensions (called _plugs_) it can feel more like a _knowledge playground_, allowing you to annotate, combine and query your accumulated knowledge in creative ways, specific to you.
Silver Bullet (SB) is an extensible, open source **personal knowledge playground**. At its core it’s a clean markdown-based writing/note taking application that stores your _pages_ (notes) as plain markdown files in a folder referred to as a _space_. Pages can be cross-linked using the `[[link to other page]]` syntax. This makes it a simple tool for [Personal Knowledge Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_management). However, once you leverage its various extensions (called _plugs_) it can feel more like a _knowledge playground_, allowing you to annotate, combine and query your accumulated knowledge in creative ways specific to you.
So what is it SB _really_? That is hard to answer. It can do a ton of stuff out of the box, and I’m constantly finding new use cases. It’s like... a silver bullet!
For more in-depth information, an interactive demo, and links to more background, check out the [Silver Bullet website](https://silverbullet.md) (published from this repo’s `website/` folder).
Below is what it looks like in action (when run on the `website` folder in this repo).
Or checkout these two videos:
![Screenshot](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zefhemel/silverbullet/main/images/silverbullet1.png)
And [here is a video of me demoing some of its features](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYdc3UF9gok).
Here’s how I use it today (but this has grown significantly over time):
* Basic note taking, e.g. meeting notes, notes on books I read, blogs I read, podcasts I listen to, movies I watch.
* Getting a quick glance at the work people in my team are doing by pulling data from our 1:1 notes, recent activity on Github (such as recent pull requests) and other sources.
* Writing:
* [My blog](https://zef.plus) is published via SB’s [Ghost](https://ghost.org) plugin.
* An internal newsletter that I write is written in SB.
* Performance reviews for my team (I work as a people manager) are written and managed using SB (for which I extensively use SB’s meta data features and query that data in various ways).
* A custom SB plugin aggregates data from our OpsGenie account every week, and publishes it to our [Mattermost](https://mattermost.com/) instance.
* It powers part of my smart home: I wired HomeBridge webhooks up to custom HTTP endpoints exposed by my custom smart home SB plug.
That’s a pretty crazy wide range of use cases!
I know, right?
**Disclaimer:** Silver Bullet is under heavy development and significant changes under the hood happen constantly. It’s also low on automated tests and documentation. All this will improve over time. I’ll do better, I promise.
More documentation can be found in the [website space](https://github.com/zefhemel/silverbullet/tree/main/website)
* [A Tour of some of Silver Bullet’s features](https://youtu.be/RYdc3UF9gok) — spoiler alert: it’s cool.
* [A look the SilverBullet architecture](https://youtu.be/mXCGau05p5o) — spoiler alert: it’s plugs all the way down.
## Features
* **Free and open source**
* **Minimalistic** UI with [What You See is What You Mean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYM) Markdown editing.
* **Future proof**: stores all notes in a regular folder with markdown files, no proprietary file formats. While SB uses a SQLite database for indexes, this database can be wiped and rebuilt based on your pages at any time. Your Markdown files are the single source of truth.
* **Run anywhere**: run it on your local machine, or install it on a server. You access it via your web browser (desktop or mobile), or install it as a PWA (giving it its own window frame and dock/launcher/dock icon).
* **Keyboard oriented:** you can fully operate SB via the keyboard.
* **Extensible** through plugs.
* **Free and open source**. Silver Bullet is MIT licensed.
* **The truth is in the markdown.** Silver Bullet doesn’t use proprietary file formats. It keeps it data as plain markdown files on disk. While SB uses a database for indexing and caching some indexes, all of that can be rebuilt from its markdown source at any time. If SB would ever go away, you can still read your pages with any text editor.
* **One single, distraction free mode.** SB doesn’t have a separate view and edit mode. It doesn’t have a “focus mode.” You’re always in focused edit mode, why wouldn’t you?
* **Keyboard oriented**. You can use SB fully using the keyboard, typin’ the keys.
* **Extend it your way**. SB is highly extensible with [plugs](https://silverbullet.md/🔌_Plugs), and you can customize it to your liking and your workflows.
## Installing and running Silver Bullet
## Installing Silver Bullet
To install Silver Bullet, you will need a recent version of [node.js installed](https://nodejs.org/en/) (16+) installed. Silver Bullet has only been tested on MacOS and Linux thus far. It may run on Windows as well, let me know if it does.
## Start with docker
First you have to clone the repo, then configure your port, space/directory in .env file
then run
```
docker compose up
```
then open your browser and ROCK!
e.g.
```
localhost:PORT
```
## Start without docker
To run a release version, you need to have a recent version of npm (8+) and node.js (16+) installed as well as some basic build infrastructure (make, cpp). Silver Bullet has only been tested on MacOS and Linux thus far.
To install and run, create a folder for your pages (can be empty or an existing folder with `.md` files) and run:
To install and run SB, create a folder for your pages (it can be empty, or be an existing folder with `.md` files) and run the following command in your terminal:
npx @silverbulletmd/server <path-to-folder>
Optionally you can use the `--port` argument to specify a HTTP port (defaults to `3000`) and you can pass a `--password` flag to require a password to access. Note this is a rather weak security mechanism, so it’s recommended to add additional layers of security on top of this if you run this on a public server somewhere (at least add TLS). Personally I run it on a tiny Linux VM on my server at home, and use a VPN (Tailscale) to access it from outside my home.
## Stack
* Written in [TypeScript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/)
* Built on the excellent [CodeMirror 6](https://codemirror.net/) editor component
* Front-end (beside CodeMirror) is built using React.js
* [ParcelJS](https://parceljs.org/) is used to build both the front-end and back-end
* Backend runs on node.js using express
## Development
This Silver Bullet repo is a monorepo using npm's "workspaces" feature.
This will do one of three things:
Requirements:
- node 18+ and npm 8+
- C/C++ compilers (for compiling SQLite, on debian/ubuntu style systems you get these via the `build-essential` package)
- python v2.7
1. If you _don’t have_ SB installed, it will download and run the latest version.
2. If you _already have_ SB installed, but there is a newer version available, it will offer to upgrade. Say yes!
3. If you _already have the latest and greatest_ SB installed, it will just run it.
> **Note**
> If you use nvm, you can just `nvm install` and it should use the right version
By default, SB will bind to port `3000`, to use a different port use the `--port` flag. By default SB doesn’t offer any sort of authentication, to add basic password authentication, pass the `--password` flag.
> **Note**
> On MacOs Monterey, python v2.7 is no longer shipped, if you install pyenv, you can `pyenv install` and it should use the right version
Once downloaded and booted, SB will print out a URL to open SB in your browser (spoiler alert: by default this will be http://localhost:3000 ).
#protip: If you have a PWA enabled browser (like any browser based on Chromium) hit that little button right of the location bar to install SB, and give it its own window frame (sans location bar) and desktop/dock icon. At last the PWA has found its killer app.
To run, after clone:
## Developing Silver Bullet
Silver Bullet is written in [TypeScript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) and built on top of the excellent [CodeMirror 6](https://codemirror.net/) editor component. Additional UI is built using React.js. [ParcelJS](https://parceljs.org/) is used to build both the front-end and back-end bundles. The server backend runs as a HTTP server on node.js using express.
This repo is a monorepo using npm's "workspaces" feature. It consists of a number of npm packages under `packages`.
Requirements: node 16+ and npm 8+ as well as C/C++ compilers (for compiling SQLite, on debian/ubuntu style systems you get these via the `build-essential` package).
After cloning the repo, run the following commands to do an initial build:
```shell
# Install dependencies
npm install
# Run initial build (web app, server, etc.)
npm run build
# Again, to install the CLIs just built (plugos-bundler, silverbullet)
npm install
# Build built-in plugs
npm run build-plugs
# Launch server
npm run clean-build
```
You can then run the server in “watch mode” (automatically restarting when you change source files) with:
```shell
npm run server -- <PATH-TO-YOUR-SPACE>
```
This `<PATH-TO-YOUR-SPACE>` can be any folder with markdown files, upon first boot SB will ensure there is an `index.md` file (root page) and `PLUGS.md` file (with default list of plugs to load). SB will also create a SQLite `data.db` file with various data caches and indices (you can delete this file at any time and use the `Space: Reindex` command to reindex everything).
`<PATH-TO-YOUR-SPACE>` can be any folder with markdown files (or an empty folder).
Open SB at http://localhost:3000 If you're using a browser supporting PWAs, you can install this page as a PWA. This also works on iOS (use the "Add to homescreen" option in the share menu).
After this initial build, I generally run three commands in parallel (in separate terminals):
General development workflow:
Run these in separate terminals
```shell
# Runs ParcelJS in watch mode, rebuilding the server and webapp continuously on change
npm run watch
# Runs the silverbullet server
# Runs the silverbullet server, restarting when changes are detected
npm run server -- <PATH-TO-YOUR-SPACE>
# Builds (and watches for changes) all builtin plugs (in packages/plugs)
# Builds (and watches for changes) all builtin plugs (in packages/plugs), still requires you to run Cmd-Shift-p (Mac) or Ctrl-Shift-p (Linux, Windows) in SB to reload these plugs
npm run plugs
```
## Feedback
If you (hypothetically) find bugs or have feature requests, post them in [our issue tracker](https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet/issues). Would you like to contribute? [Check out the code](https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet), and the issue tracker as well for ideas on what to work on.